Idea for a Evolution and Society driven game
Now i'm not a programmer but I am an ideas kinda guy, I would love to team up with [deleted by mod]
I want to create a game where you create a species from a basic blue print i.e mammal/repitilian, hominid etc and from there you create the look of your species, when in game you're playing as one family or herd whatever you want to call it and you have to try and get them to the point where they are able to begin creating civilization, all the while dealing with natural disasters etc.
Once you've got to the civilization stage of the game you choose a blue print of what you want your society to develop like i.e rome, celtic britain and ireland, the vikings etc and you actively engage in town planning and decide whether to form a monarchy or council based ruling system.
Now this is only a rough outline of what i intend and i'd like some feedback on how feasible of an idea it is? and whether anyone would be interested in [deleted by mod]
1. i'd [sic] like some feedback on how feasible of an idea it is?
2. and whether anyone would be interested in [deleted by mod]
1. Anything is possible except time travel to the past, and the Star Trek holodeck. It's feasible.
2. Recruiting is not permitted in the discussion forums. Please use the Classifieds to find people.
Then there's the question of whether this is a Writing topic (story) or a Game Design topic. I'm thinking it's a Game Design topic (idea for a game, not idea for a story), so I'm moving this to Game Design.
Go into a little more detail about what sets this apart from Spore, please. This looks a lot like Spore, on its face, but you seem to be trying to accentuate the thing I hated about that game, which was the mishmash of different game modes and mandatory switches between them.
At each stage of Spore, you have a fairly small amount of content and an interface that differs somewhat from other stages. It felt to me like every time I "got good" at the game I was playing, I was obligated to stop playing that game and start playing another game, at which I was not good. Past success didn't translate into any appreciable advantage, since having cleverly placed spines or teeth had no impact on my critters' ability to fly a spaceship, so the player is in essence traversing a sequence of minigames to unlock the game's final form, which was kind of insipid.
So if you make a game that's similar, but more hardcore, then you'll have to have a more robust creature creation system, a deeper social interaction system, a sophisticated city simulation system and a compelling political system. Each of these products would be a challenge for any team to produce, and the task of integrating them into a functional whole may well be insurmountable. Is there a chance you'll get into a situation where your species is not competitive in global warfare because they don't have the thumbs needed to operate rifles? Will your industry suffer because your cold-blooded workers only do two hours of work per day, spending the rest of their time basking on warm rocks? Will a failure to nail down a central religious tradition render your civilization incapable of sustaining its social justice as it expands?
In short, will decisions from small-scale gameplay have serious ramifications when applied to large-scale gameplay? If so, will you be able to "back up" and fix errors? If not, aren't the early stages just one big stupid character creator for the "real" game? Will each phase have its own interface for the player to master, or will they all use the same universal UI?
You need more than programmers, bub. You need a better idea.
In my experience there are very few game designers, developers, or players, who really understand how cultural evolution works. This makes it difficult to design a cultural evolution game mechanic that doesn't seem artificial or overly restricted.